Today is my last real day of summer vacation. Tomorrow morning I need to be at school by 8:30am for a lead teacher meeting, after which I’ll sort through all the supplies and text books which (hopefully!) have arrived for the new school year.

As much as I enjoy teaching once I get started, I don't really look forward to starting the new school year. I enjoy being on my own schedule in the summer. I enjoy all the editing and writing that I have been doing, which can never be finished in a mere 2 months. I enjoy all the reading I have had time to do as well.

This is going to be a particularly busy school year too. I am teaching 5 different subjects, which means every day I will need to prepare 5 different lessons. And not simple stuff either:

• AP Calculus is switching from AB to BC, which means more material to prepare, and more difficult material as well;

• I am still nowhere near being totally proficient in AP Statistics, which means I need to review that every single day. Plus I want to “shore up” the course a bit in an attempt to improve the end-of-the-year AP scores slightly;

• Algebra 2 had a new textbook and curriculum last year, which I did not teach, so that will be an entirely new preparation every day;

• ESL is always confusing to teach since students arrive in that class from different countries at totally different levels of preparation. Last year I simultaneously had students in there learning pre-Algebra, Algebra 1, and Algebra 2. While I try to move some students into mainstream classes, that is not always possible when they arrive mid-year, as most of them do;

• Honors Algebra 2 had a new curriculum last year, which I did teach, so that is the only course which should not be overly time-consuming this year.

Two years ago when the teachers did not have a contract, I kept track of my “average” weekly working schedule, which came to approximately 51 hours per week. That’s a long work week, which does not bother me except I dislike going four months between now and Christmas vacation with no writing, minimal reading, and basically no free weekends.

It’s a good think that I really love teaching!

All the students and teachers I know have either returned to school already or else are preparing to return. Good luck to all the incoming freshmen. Most of you worked hard to earn your way into the college you are attending, so be sure to make the most of it so as to make yourself attractive to either the job market or graduate schools. It’s easy sometimes to fall prey to all the distractions on a college campus; just keep your ultimate goal in mind and you should be fine.

I have one week of vacation left, with far too many chores left to finish in that time. As usual, once school begins I will lose most of my weekends and evenings to schoolwork. Teaching is a strange professions in which all the free weekends are grouped together in one two-month clump in the summer. That makes for nice summers but incredibly-stressful school years. And I have grown weary of non-teachers who do not understand the teaching profession complaining about our “working half a year.” Last year I worked over 1900 hours which prorated across 48 weeks is 41 hours per week. How the heck is that working half a year?

This weekend is the World Science Fiction Convention and, as usual, I wish I could be there. I have not attended a worldcon since 1981 for various reasons, one being the expense for an event that nobody in my family but me would enjoy. Hopefully someday I’ll attend another...

The last two weeks of summer vacation are always hectic ones because that is my last chance to finish chores before the crush of schoolwork begins. But this week has been much busier than usual, so I am beginning to doubt I can actually finish everything. The main chores I need to finish are writing a draft of a novelette I have been writing all summer, plus organize all of my mother’s financial records. Also I have been stalling sorting through our own 27 years’ worth of financial records, which I really want to do this summer.

Monday Jean and I awoke at 3:30am while Andy, and his two friends were still celebrating Andy’s leaving for 4 months interning at Disney World. After we ate breakfast, the five of us drove to Newark Airport for Andy’s flight.

When we returned, we went to my mother’s house to finish removing her furniture from the house she is giving up at the end of the month. David took her computer table–which he is storing until she has an apartment for it–and we took my parents’ dining room table.

Tuesday we returned to my mother’s house with Kate’s family and their trailer hitch to get her television wall unit, which was large and heavy! Afterwards Jean and I returned to the airport to get Ceil who was returning from two weeks’ visiting her son in Colorado.

Yesterday we drove to Mark’s apartment near TCNJ, with his furniture, including a dresser and the wall unit following along behind us in a hitched trailer.

Tomorrow we are driving to Oriskany, New York, to take Ceil home. On the way we will stop at ESU to do some paperwork for Andy’s internship. Then we will stay overnight in Oriskany and return Saturday night.

Laughter is the best medicine:

There was a man who had worked all of his life and had saved all of his money. He was a real miser when it came to his money though. He loved money more than just about anything, and just before he died he said to his wife, "Now listen, when I die I want you to take all my money and place it in the casket with me. Because I wanna take my money to the afterlife." He got his wife to promise him with all her heart that when he died, she would put all the money in the casket with him.

Well one day he died. He was stretched out in the casket, the wife was sitting there in black next to her closest friend. When they finished the ceremony, just before the undertakers got ready to close the casket, the wife said "Wait just a minute!"

She walked over with a shoebox which she placed in the casket. Then the undertakers locked the casket down and rolled it away.

Her friend said, "I hope you weren't crazy enough to put all that money in there with that stingy old man."

She said, "Yes, I promised. I'm a good Christian, I can't lie. I promised him that I was going to put that money in that casket with him."

"You mean to tell me you put every cent of his money in the casket with him?"

"I sure did," said the wife. "I got it all together, put it into my account and I wrote him a check."

*

A pirate walked into a bar in Miami and the bartender said, "Hey, I haven't seen you in awhile. What happened? You look terrible."

"What do you mean?" said the pirate, "I feel fine."

"What about the wooden leg? You didn't have that before."

"Well, we were in a battle and I got hit with a cannonball, but I'm fine now."

"Well, OK, but what about that hook? What happened to your hand?"

"We were in another battle. I boarded a ship and got into a sword fight. My hand was cut off. I got fitted with a hook. I'm fine, really."

"What about that eye patch?"

"Oh, one day we were at sea and a flock of birds flew over. I looked up and one of them pooped in my eye."

"You're kidding," said the bartender. "You couldn't lose an eye just from some bird poop."

"It was my first day with the hook."

I am interested in the early history of humanity before the era of written records which began about four thousand years ago. Apparently homo neanderthalensis (Neanderthals) thrived approximately from 180,000 years ago until 30,000 years ago. Anthropologists are not certain why they died out, although one theory is they were not capable of adapting to the Ice Age. Another theory is that homo sapiens killed them off.

There does not seem to be much doubt that homo sapiens are an incredibly-brutal and savage race. Our earliest histories are filled with wars and destruction. Any list of the most famous ancients studied in schools and seemingly admired today includes Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, and Charlemagne, all of whom were most noted for building empires, which required invading other countries and conquering native peoples. That is a euphemism for killing and pillaging.

Do not fool yourself into thinking that is merely an ancient problem. Recent history always includes Napolean Bonaparte and the British Empire, modern versions of those ancient warriors. (By the way, has anybody but me ever wondered how the British could possibly have an empire when they never even had an emperor?)

And look at a history of the past century. “Highlights” of American history include World War I, World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, the Cold War, and several wars with Iraq. One history teacher mentioned to me that you cannot possibly study history unless you study wars. Isn’t that a sorry situation?

You would think that after 30,000 years humans would have matured at least a bit as a race. Sorry, we’re still the same savage, destructive, self-centered homo sapiens who killed off the Neanderthals. Only this time we seem determined to kill off ourselves instead.

This week’s Connecticut primary election was interesting both in a positive and in a negative sense. It was positive because it showed there is definitely an anti-Bush anti-war faction in this country, which hopefully will begin to show its clout in the November federal elections. It was negative because it showed that while independents are the majority of voters in this country, the primaries are dominated by the extreme wings of the parties (liberal Democrats and conservative Republicans), so that often the nominees do not reflect the overall will of the people, but rather the choices of the minority.

Perhaps elections would be fairer if primaries were eliminated and elections open to all candidates. Thus, in the 2000 presidential election for example, all four major candidates (Bush, McCain, Gore, and Bradley) would have run side-by-side, with the top two candidates having a subsequent runoff. Since McCain had much broader appeal throughout the country than Bush did at that time, I suspect the runoff would have been between McCain and Gore, with McCain probably winning the election fairly and legally.

I suspect we would not be stuck in the current Iraqi quagmire if John McCain had been president of the U.S. the past six years!

I spent the past two mornings at school revising the Advanced Placement Calculus curriculum. After teaching AB for twenty-five years, we have finally switched to BC. This will require a bit more work on the part of the students, not to mention me since I will be teaching what is basically a new curriculum next year. In fact, I have five different preparations to teach next year (AP Calculus, AP Statistics, Honors Algebra 2 with 30 students in one section, Regular Algebra 2, and ESL), so it should be a very hectic and busy year. Good-bye, weekends...

The Tibet book is coming along steadily, but I think it needs another quick draft. Plus I have not begun writing the outline and cover letter yet to submit to publishers, all of which I need to finish in the next 4 weeks since it is almost impossible for me to find time to work on a book during school. Another reason why retirement might be a good idea, haha.

Currently listening: I recently got three of Elton John’s best albums on CD: Elton John, Madman Across the Water and Honky Chateau. It is easy to dismiss him as a major artist because of his personal craziness and the fact that he releases every song he records, rather than sifting through them to weed out the chaff, like most artists do. But when Elton John is on the top of his game, he compares favorably to any recording artist, and these three albums are absolutely sparkling.

Currently reading: Redemption Ark is the second novel in Alastair Reynold’s far-future space opera series Galactic North, and it is nearly as good as the first book Revelation Space. I want to live in the 99th millennium and experience some of these sfnal marvels for myself!

Yesterday we got back from a week camping at Old Forge, New York, in the heart of the gorgeous Adirondack Mountains. Our popup camper is convenient, especially for two people, and sure beats tent camping which is much too rustic for a lover of comfort like me. Our activities included:

• a lot of hiking, including one steep climb to the top of Bald Mountain which offered an absolute gorgeous view of the surroundings;
• a boat tour of the Fulton Chain of Lakes. Seeing all those lakefront houses made me realize what a boring place New Jersey would be to retire in;
• nightly campfires with smores;
• window shopping in small tourist towns Old Forge and Inlet. Naturally I found a few bookstores, but nothing I really wanted to read;
• eating (of course)–what good would a vacation be without lots of food! ☺
• reading (of course). I absolutely love the first two volumes of Alastair Reynold’s Galactic North trilogy and am anxious to buy the concluding volume asap.